Tom Hanks, Toy Story (1995)
John Lasseter, the founding and guiding light of Pixar movies, graduated from Oscar-winning shorts to this blockbuster feature about a child's bedroom full of toys with minds of their own. For the lead roles Lasseter picked two stars: from movies, Hanks as the cloth cowboy Woody, and from TV, Tim Allen as the more modern Buzz Lightyear. The expert exasperation Hanks put into his 90s roles ("There's no crying in baseball!") well suited him for Woody, especially when he must provide tough-love psychotherapy to Buzz, who thinks he's an actual space hero. "You — are — a — toy!" Woody tells him, as a stern parent would a backward child. "You aren't the real Buzz Lightyear! You are an action figure! You are a child's play-thing!" We daren't tell Woody that he too is deluded: some writer of a fantasy series invented Buzz. Actually, Lasseter did.
Listen to TIME's top 10 Pixar voices:
Richard Corliss reviews Pixar's latest: Up
Pixar, Bruno and more: See TIME's complete summer arts preview